Entrepreneurial Information Search Behavior for Opportunity Recognition: Scale Development

How entrepreneurs search for information influences entrepreneurial opportunity recognition processes like the amount of opportunities recognized by entrepreneurs. The odds of entrepreneurs to successfully recognize promising opportunities increases if we advance our understanding of entrepreneurial information search behavior. However, despite its imputed relevance, academic understanding remains limited particularly due to empirical issues. Existing scales attempting to measure such search behaviors lack sufficient distinguishability between the different types of information search behavior. Thus, it is almost impossible to assess what construct is actually being measured. This entails the need for a valid, reliable and applicable new measure. By building on opportunity discovery and information search theory, we develop and validate a scale of information search behavior. We found proof for three distinct types of information search behaviour, namely, passive, proactive and systematic search.